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Software industry is continuously exploring better ways to develop applications. A new phenomenon to achieve this is cloud‐based global software development (CGSD), which refers to the adoption of cloud computing services by organizations to support global software development projects. The CGSD approach affects the strategic and operational aspects of the way projects are managed. The objective of the study is to identify the success factors which contribute to management of CGSD projects. We carried out a multivocal literature review (MLR) to identify the success factors from the state‐of‐the‐art and the state‐of‐the‐practice in project management of CGSD projects. We identified 32 success factors that contribute to the management of CGSD projects. The findings of MLR indicate that time to market, continuous development, financial restructuring, and scalability are the most critical success factors for CGSD. Moreover, the findings of the study show that there is a positive correlation between the success factors reported in both formal literature and industry based gray literature. The findings of this study can assist the practitioners to develop the strategies needed for effective project management of CGSD projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The software industry has widely adopted global software development (GSD) to gain economic benefits. Organizations that engage in GSD face various challenges, the majority being associated with requirements change management (RCM). The key motive of this study is to develop a requirement change management and implementation maturity model (SRCMIMM) for the GSD industry that could help the practitioners to assess and manage their RCM activities. A systematic literature review and questionnaire survey approach are used to identify and validate the critical success factors (CSFs), critical challenges (CCHs), and the related best practices of the RCM process. The investigated CSFs and CCHs are classified into five maturity levels based on the concepts of the existing maturity models in other domains, practitioners' feedback, and academic research. Every maturity level comprises different CSFs and CCHs that can help assess and manage a firm's RCM capability. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model, four case studies are conducted in different GSD firms. The SRCMIMM has been developed to assist GSD organizations in improving their RCM process in efficiency and effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recommendation systems plays an important role in today's life as it assist in reliable selection of common utilities. The code recommendation system is being used by the code databases (GitHub, source frog etc.) aiming to recommend the more appropriate code to the users. There are several factors that could negatively impact the performance of code recommendation systems (CRS). This study aims to empirically explore the challenges that could have critical impact on the performance of the CRS. Using systematic literature review and questionnaire survey approaches, 19 challenges were identified. Secondly, the investigated challenges were further prioritized using fuzzy-AHP analysis. The identification of challenges, their categorization and the fuzzy-AHP analysis provides the prioritization-based taxonomy of explored challenges. The study findings will assist the real-world industry experts and to academic researchers to improve and develop the new techniques for the improvement of CRS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reaction of a transiently formed terminal phosphinidene complex with triethylamine resulted in the formation of an sp3 C–H insertion product, as revealed by 31P NMR spectroscopy, which was isolated as semi-solid compound. However, if the reaction was continued for 24 h, a primary phosphane complex was obtained eventually. The compounds were characterised by NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. Formation of the final products is explained by a mechanistic proposal based on DFT calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managing the cloud‐based software development outsourcing (CSDO) activities across the geographically distributed development sites are much challenging. This study aims to identify the success factors (SFs) for CSDO and prioritize them based on their significance. To achieve this objective, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) and survey study with industrial and academic experts. Finally, we applied the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to develop the framework based on the prioritization of the identified SFs. We believe that the findings of this study will assist the industry practitioners and researchers in developing effective strategies for the successful implementation of CSDO activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development and operations (DevOps) practices significantly accelerate and automate the continuous delivery and deployment of software systems. However, adopting DevOps concepts is not a straightforward job. Most organizations are not able to keep pace with the rhythm of continuous delivery and deployment, which are key DevOps attributes. Despite the significance of DevOps programs, it is still unknown why software development firms are demotivated or unable to adopt them. We tried to fill this gap by investigating, prioritizing, and developing the taxonomy of the key factors that could impact the adaptation and implementation of DevOps practices. We extracted a total of 16 factors from the available literature and empirically assessed them using the survey approach. The identified factors are further classified into three core categories of the software process improvement (SPI) manifesto. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach was used to calculate the prioritization weight for each factor and present it as a taxonomy. The developed taxonomy provides a roadmap to tackle the key challenges to implementing DevOps and offers suggestions for streamlining DevOps practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global software development (GSD) organisations are currently adopting agile frameworks in order to efficiently develop a software product. The main objective of this study is to identify the success factors (SFs), which could possibly have a positive impact on scaling agile practices in a GSD environment and develop their taxonomy based on their prioritisation using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach. This study is conducted in four stages: problem identification and goal of the study (1), identification of SFs and their categorisations (2), validation of the SFs using questionnaire survey (3), and application of AHP to prioritise the SFs and develop the taxonomy of the SFs and their respective categories (4). The results of this study indicated that 'technology' is the most significant category as compared to the other categories of the SFs. Similarly, rich technological infrastructure is identified as a most important factor. Based on the findings of this study, authors can conclude that the contribution of this study is not only limited to development of the taxonomy of the SFs, but also their proper prioritisation by introducing AHP approach, which assists software organisations to scale agile methods effectively in the GSD environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Majority of software development firms are adopting the concepts of global software development (GSD) in order to develop high‐quality and low‐cost products. However, the requirements change management (RCM) becomes a significant challenge in the GSD environment because of the unavailability of proper RCM framework and taxonomy. The objective of this study is to develop a taxonomy of the challenging factors of the RCM process in GSD. The taxonomy is developed based on the results of the data collected during the survey study and the implementation of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Total 25 challenging factors are identified and mapped into four core categories, ie, "organizational management," "team," "technology," and "process." Moreover, the AHP analysis is performed to prioritize the challenging factors and their categories. The prioritization process highlight that "process" is the most significant category of the RCM challenging factors. The taxonomy developed in this study provides a robust framework to tackle problems associated with RCM activities in GSD environment, which is significant to the success and progression of GSD firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most software development firms have adopted the concepts of global software development (GSD) to develop high‐quality and low‐cost products. However, GSD is not a straightforward process. It is associated with many challenges that are mostly related to requirements change management (RCM). In this study, we explore the motivators that contribute to managing RCM activities in the GSD environment. We extracted a total of 25 motivators using the systematic literature review (SLR) approach and conducted a survey study to empirically evaluate the findings of the SLR. The results of the applied Spearman's statistical test show that the findings of the SLR and survey study had a positive moderate correlation (rs(25) = 0.566). We further analyzed the reported motivators according to organization size. Finally, we developed taxonomies of the identified motivators based on the framework proposed by Ramasubbu and the project management body of knowledge. We believe that the taxonomies provide a robust framework for tackling the challenges of RCM, which is significant for the success and evolution of GSD firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transiently generated electrophilic terminal phosphinidene complex [(CO)5WPCH(SiMe3)2] reacted with allyl halides (X = F, Cl, Br) in toluene resulting in the formation of stable C–X insertion products 3a–c and diastereomeric phosphirane complexes 4a,a′,b,b′ as well as methylenephosphirane complex 5 as observed by 31P{1H} NMR spectroscopy. DFT calculations revealed that a novel rearrangement of transient phosphirane complexes is responsible involving C → P X atom transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of organisations are globalising their software development activities by following the ideas of global software development (GSD). The motivation behind the adoption of GSD phenomena are the list of benefits gained by the software industry. However, there are different challenges face by the GSD organisations, particularly the issues related to software process improvement (SPI). The aim of this study is the identification and classification into categories of the success factors that can impact SPI initiatives taken in GSD organisations. The systematic literature review (SLR) method has been used to extract the success factors from the literature. SLR phases, 'planning, conducting, and reporting the review' have been followed to perform this study. Totally, 15 success factors were identified and classified into the six main categories. The authors have also reported the critical success factors of SPI, i.e. management commitment, staff involvement, roles and responsibilities, communication, and resources allocation. This article also reported the similarities and differences between the success factors classified on the bases of client‐vendor organisation and size of the organisation. The identified factors can contribute towards the implementation of SPI programme in both client and vendor GSD organisations because these factors represent key areas of process improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, many software development organisations are globalising their work throughout the world. The motivation behind the software globalisation is competitive advantage and business profits that it yields to an organisation. Besides, these organisations are facing various challenges due to the distributed nature of the software development. However, software process improvement (SPI) is one of the biggest issues in the domain of global software development (GSD). The aim of this research study is to identify success factors and barriers to assist GSD organisations for successful implementation of SPI program. Accordingly, a systematic literature review approach was adopted to identify the success factors and barriers. A total of nine success factors and six barriers were identified that could impact SPI. Using the criteria of the factors having a frequency >50% as critical, total four success factors were ranked as critical success factors, i.e. management commitment, staff involvement, allocated resources and pilot projects. Moreover, total four barriers were classified as critical barriers, i.e. lack of resources, inexperienced staff, organisational politics and time pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Wood ash is a highly alkaline material comprises of inorganic constituents. A limited information on use of wood ash as catalyst is available in literature. The present study was undertaken to investigate the catalytic activity of wood ash for transesterification of Jatropha oil. The thermal treatment (calcination) of wood ash was carried out at temperature in the range of 500–1200 °C to produce calcined wood ash catalysts (CWC). The wood ash was also chemically activated with K2CO3 and CaCO3 by double carbonate solid state reaction to yield activated wood ash catalysts (AWC). The prepared catalysts were characterized by analytical techniques for surface morphology, crystalline phases, textural characteristics and alkalinity. Methyl ester conversion of Jatropha oil was achieved in the range of 97–99% with CWC and AWC catalysts. The synthesized Jatropha methyl esters using CWC and AWC catalysts have been found meeting the critical physico-chemical properties of ASTM D-6751 standards of biodiesel. The present study revealed the possibility of producing potential heterogeneous catalyst from wood ash for biodiesel synthesis, which can find a way to utilize abundant wood ash and reduce the overall cost of biodiesel production. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Software development firms have begun adopting the practice of global software development (GSD). The main reason for the shift toward globalization is the various benefits received by software development firms. However, there are several issues faced by GSD organizations, particularly those associated with software process improvement (SPI). It has been noticed that a formal process improvement approach could assist in successfully executing development activities in GSD. The core objective of this research work is to develop a global software engineering process improvement model (GSEPIM) to assess and improve software process activities in a GSD environment. The proposed model will be developed based on existing models in other domains, an empirical study conducted with GSD practitioners, and an understanding of critical success factors and challenges of SPI. In this study, the first step in the development of GSEPIM is completed by identifying the challenges of SPI in GSD and presenting a solution in the form of a robust framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning and managing of requirement change management (RCM) process in global software development (GSD) are a complicated task, but the RCM plays a significant role in developing the quality software within time and budget. The key aim of this study is to prioritize the factors that could positively influence the RCM program in GSD context. To achieve the study objective, the questionnaire survey study was conducted to get the feedback of the practitioners concerning the success factors of RCM in GSD context. Moreover, the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) was applied. The application of FAHP is novel in this research domain as it has been effectively applied previously in various other research areas, for example, supplier selection, electronics and electrical, personnel selection, and agile software development. The results of this study will provide the prioritization‐based taxonomy of RCM success factors and also contribute by introducing the novel FAHP approach in the research domain of RCM in GSD. The FAHP approach assists the practitioners to reduce the uncertainty and vague opinions of RCM experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of organizations have adopted offshore software development (OSD) practices to support their software development in terms of reducing time to market, access to technical talent and lower costs. There is a lack of understandings of the factors associated with successful management of OSD projects. The objective of this study is to identify and prioritize the factors that contribute to successful management of OSD projects. First, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify a set of factors that influence successful management of OSD projects. Second, a questionnaire survey was developed based on the findings of the SLR to collect feedback from industry practitioners. Finally, we prioritized the success factors using the analytic hierarchy process. In total, 36 success factors were identified. Findings of the study indicate that standards and procedures, change management engineering and trust building between distributed teams are key factors for the successful execution OSD projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though like other domains such as email filtering, web page classification, sentiment analysis, and author identification, the researchers have employed the text categorization approach to automate organization and selection of design patterns. However, there is a need to bridge the gap between the semantic relationship between design patterns (i.e. Documents) and the features which are used for the organization of design patterns. In this study, we propose an approach by leveraging a powerful deep learning algorithm named Deep Belief Network (DBN) which learns on the semantic representation of documents formulated in the form of feature vectors. We performed a case study in the context of a text categorization based automated system used for the classification and selection of software design patterns. In the case study, we focused on two main research objectives: 1) to empirically investigate the effect of feature sets constructed through the global filter-based feature selection methods besides the proposed approach, and 2) to evaluate the significant improvement in the classification decision (i.e. Pattern organization) of classifiers using the proposed approach. The adjustment of DBN parameters such as a number of hidden layers, nodes and iteration can aid a developer to construct a more illustrative feature set. The experimental promising results suggest the significance of the proposed approach to construct a more representative feature set and improve the classifier’s performance in terms of organization of design patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve and sustain the quality of software products, software process improvement (SPI) is needed. Currently, small and medium software enterprises (SMSEs) represent a high proportion of companies around the world and become a cornerstone in the worldwide industry economy. These companies have realized that improving their process is crucial for success, but they are facing difficulties to implement it due to limited resources, limited knowledge, and time constraints. This study aimed to identify the sustainability success factors (SSFs) that have a positive impact on implementing SPI efforts in SMSEs. Data were collected through a systematic literature review (SLR) approach and quantitatively through a survey questionnaire. A list of 44 SSFs was identified during SLR and empirical study. Results illustrate that there is a positive correlation between the ranks obtained from both dataset (rs (44) =.548, ρ =.001). Therefore, there would be significant differences between the SSFs identified in both datasets. In conclusion, the top‐ranked factors can then be used to guide the SPI coordinators on where they should focus their attention to reach the desired SPI goals, which is crucial to deliver the software products and also facilitates in development of model for SPIs in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2-[(4-bromophenylamino)-methyl]-phenol (1)gave substantially pure 3-(4-bromophenyl)-2-phenyl-3,4-dihydro-2H-benzo[e][1,3,2]- oxazaphosphinine(2)on cyclization with phenyldichlorophosphine in toluene at 0 °C. Reaction of2with H2O2in dichloromethane gave selectively3. P-chalcogenides (4and5)were prepared by reacting2with elemental S and Se powder in toluene, whereas the tungsten pentacarbonyl complex6was prepared by reacting2with [W(CO)5(CH3CN)] in tetrahydrofuran at 25 °C. Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition ofPhosphorus, Sulfer, and Silicon and the Related Elementsfor the following free supplemental files:Additional figures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Terminalia belerica seeds, collected from Indian forests, were explored as an alternate bioresource for biodiesel synthesis. The oil yield of T. belerica seed is about 31% (dry weight basis). The fatty acid profile of T. belerica seed oil shows predominance of oleic acid (C18:1) glycerides (61.5%) along with linoleic (18.5%) and palmitic (11.6%) glycerides. Oil was extracted and evaluated for physico-chemical properties vis-a-vis jatropha, sunflower, soybean and rapeseed oil. T. belerica oil was transesterified with methanol in the presence of sodium methoxide catalyst. The physico-chemical properties of synthesized methyl ester were compared to jatropha, sunflower, soybean and rapeseed methyl esters as per ASTM D-6751 specification of biodiesel. Synthesized T. belerica methyl ester was also blended in diesel at 5–20% ratios and evaluated for key physico-chemical properties as per IS 1460 specification and found to meet in properties evaluated as per specific standards. The study revealed the possibility of T. belerica seed oil as potential resource of biodiesel. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Guizotia abyssinica seeds, a common bird feedstock, have been explored for the potential of biodiesel synthesis. The oil was extracted from the seeds by solvent extraction and composition of G. abyssinica oil was examined. The reaction parameters for biodiesel synthesis have been optimized. Temperature, oil: methanol ratio, catalyst type and catalyst concentration were found to have significant role on ester conversion. According to this study, the maximum yield of ester (98.7%) can be obtained with optimized sodium methoxide catalyst dosage (0.6%) at an operational temperature of 65°C. Methyl ester of G. abyssinica oil was also studied for its oxidation stability and low temperature properties. Further, the synthesized product was blended in diesel at 5¿20% ratios and evaluated for physico-chemical properties. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Software traceability plays a critical role in software maintenance and evolution. We conducted a systematic mapping study with six research questions to understand the benefits, costs, and challenges of using traceability in maintenance and evolution. We systematically selected, analyzed, and synthesized 63 studies published between January 2000 and May 2020, and the results show that traceability supports 11 maintenance and evolution activities, among which change management is the most frequently supported activity; strong empirical evidence from industry is needed to validate the impact of traceability on maintenance and evolution; easing the process of change management is the main benefit of deploying traceability practices; establishing and maintaining traceability links is the main cost of deploying traceability practices; 13 approaches and 32 tools that support traceability in maintenance and evolution were identified; improving the quality of traceability links, the performance of using traceability approaches, and tools are the main traceability challenges in maintenance and evolution. The findings of this study provide a comprehensive understanding of deploying traceability practices in software maintenance and evolution phase and can be used by researchers for future directions and practitioners for making informed decisions while using traceability in maintenance and evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Requirements Change Management (RCM) is one of the challenges faced by Global Software Development (GSD) organisations as requirements evolution is inevitable due to dynamic business and operating environments. GSD organisations face issues when dealing with RCM because many organisations embark on GSD without understanding their readiness to undertake such an initiative. Currently, there is no readiness model to assess the RCM process in the context of GSD. The objective of this study is to develop a requirements change management readiness model (RCMRM) for GSD organisations. A Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) was conducted to identify the primary studies related to RCM in the GSD projects. By using SMS, 109 primary studies were selected and 73 RCM practices were identified which were used to design the readiness levels of the proposed RCMRM. To validate the RCMRM, initially, two case studies were conducted in two GSD organisations. Based on the suggestions and recommendations of the case study participants,the RCMRM was further modified. The updated version of RCMRM was further validated by two different GSD organisations. The results of the second case study indicate that RCMRM is effective in assessing the readiness of the RCM process in the context of GSD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of global software development (GSD) has been adopted by a majority of the software development firms to achieve the significant benefits it offers. However, there are many challenges faced by the GSD organizations, which are mainly related to requirements change management (RCM). The key objective of this study is to identify the challenges of RCM process in GSD domain. The systematic literature review (SLR) approach has been used to investigate the challenges of RCM activities, and a total of 30 challenges were identified. We have further classified the identified challenges in the domain of client and vendor GSD organizations, aiming to provide a clear understanding of the RCM process and its challenges in the context of both types of GSD organizations. The identified challenges were also categorized into three core types according to the organization size (small, medium sized, or large), which highlights the significance of each challenge for a specific organizational size. In addition, the criticality of the identified challenges was assessed using the criteria of challenges having a frequency greater than or equal to 50%. According to the findings of this study, a framework is provided that could help GSD organizations address the problems related to RCM in a GSD environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several software design patterns have cataloged either with canonical or as variants to solve a recurring design problem. However, novice designers mostly adopt patterns without considering their ground reality and relevance to design problems, which causes to increase the development and maintenance efforts. The existing automated systems to select the design patterns need either high computing effort and time for the formal specification or precise learning through the training of several classifiers with large sample size to select the right design patterns realized on the base of their ground reality. In order to discuss this issue, we propose a method on the base of a supervised learning technique named 'Learning to Rank', to rank the design patterns via the text relevancy with the description of the given design problems. Subsequently, we also propose an evaluation model to assess the effectiveness of the proposed method. We evaluate the efficacy of the proposed method in the context of several design pattern collections and relevant design problems. The promising experimental results indicate the applicability of the proposed method as a recommendation system to select the right design pattern(s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The employment of design patterns is considered as a benchmark of software quality in terms of reducing the number of software faults. However, the quantification of the information about the hinder design issues such as the number of roles, type of design pattern, and their association with anti‐pattern classes is still required. The authors propose a new methodology to evaluate the impact of certain design issues on the software quality in terms of quantification of fault density. Firstly, they mine the required information about the classes of each system under study. Secondly, they describe taxonomy to group the classes. Subsequently, they used statistical techniques to formulate and benchmark the results. They include the analysis of four open source projects with six design patterns and six anti‐patterns in the case study. The main consequences are (i) the pattern participant classes are less dense in faults, (ii) the classes involved in the structural association between design patterns and anti‐patterns are denser in faults, (iii) the pattern participant classes with multi‐role and anti‐pattern smell association is denser in faults as compared to others. The significant difference between fault density distributions of groups of classes is still unclear and required further empirical investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Requirements uncertainty and conflict are the two pervasive phenomena that are currently receiving more attention in the development of information system (IS) projects. The existing literature based on requirements engineering indicates that, as a result of frequent interactions between users and IS practitioners, requirements uncertainty can negatively affect team performance. However, the nature of conflicts and requirements uncertainty have limited exploratory power with regard to software team effectiveness. The main objective of this work is to obtain additional insight into this phenomena by examining the relationships between requirements uncertainty (which comprises both requirements instability and variability) and conflict (i.e. task and relationship conflict). Furthermore, the impact of task and relationship conflict on team effectiveness has also been investigated separately. In order to address these relationships, a theoretical research model was developed and validated through an empirical study based on an online questionnaire survey. We gathered 71 complete responses, mostly from experts within the Indian software industry. The findings of this study indicate that there is a strong positive relationship between requirements instability and variability and relationship conflict; however, task conflict task conflict was not found to have a significant relationship with these dimensions. Additionally, we have observed a strong stronger negative effect of relationship conflict on team effectiveness than that of task conflict during the requirements uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Biliary complications are a significant cause of morbidity after living donor liver transplant (LDLT). Bile leak may occur from bile duct (anastomotic site in recipient and repaired bile duct stump in donor), cystic duct stump, cut surface pedicles or from divided caudate ducts. The first three sites are amenable to post‐operative endoscopic stenting as they are in continuation with biliary ductal system. However, leaks from divided isolated caudate ducts can be stubborn. To minimize caudate duct bile leaks, it is important to understand the anatomy of hilum with attention to the caudate lobe biliary drainage. This single‐centre prospective study of 500 consecutive LDLTs between December 2011 and December 2016 aims to define the biliary anatomy of the caudate lobe in liver donors based on intraoperative cholangiograms (IOCs) with special attention to crossover caudate ducts and to study their implications in LDLT. Caudate ducts were identified in 468 of the 500 IOCs. Incidence of left‐to‐right crossover drainage was 61.37% and right to left was 21.45%. Incidence of bile leak in donors was 0.8% and in recipients was 2.2%. Proper intraoperative identification and closure of divided isolated caudate ducts can prevent bile leak in donors as well as recipients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The value of data to a company means that it must be protected. When it comes to safeguarding their local and worldwide databases, businesses face a number of challenges. To systematically review the literature to highlight the difficulties in establishing, implementing, and maintaining secure databases. In order to better understand database system problems, we did a systematic mapping study (SMS). We’ve analyzed 100 research publications from different digital libraries and found 20 issues after adopting inclusion and exclusion criteria. This SMS study aimed to identify the most up-to-date research in database security and the different challenges faced by users/clients using various databases from a software engineering perspective. In total, 20 challenges were identified related to database security. Our results show that “weak authorization system”, “weak access control”, “privacy issues/data leakage”, “lack of NOP security”, and “database attacks” as the most frequently cited critical challenges. Further analyses were performed to show different challenges with respect to different phases of the software development lifecycle, venue of publications, types of database attacks, and active research institutes/universities researching database security. The organizations should implement adequate mitigation strategies to address the identified database challenges. This research will also provide a direction for new research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human action recognition using skeletons has become increasingly appealing to a growing number of researchers in recent years. It is particularly challenging to recognize actions when they are captured from different angles because there are so many variations in their representations. This paper proposes an automatic strategy for determining virtual observation viewpoints that are based on learning and data driven to solve the problem of view variation throughout an act. Our VA-CNN and VA-RNN networks, which use convolutional and recurrent neural networks with long short-term memory, offer an alternative to the conventional method of reorienting skeletons according to a human-defined earlier benchmark. Using the unique view adaption module, each network first identifies the best observation perspectives and then transforms the skeletons for end-to-end detection with the main classification network based on those viewpoints. The suggested view adaptive models can provide significantly more consistent virtual viewpoints using the skeletons of different perspectives. By removing views, the models allow networks to learn action-specific properties more efficiently. Furthermore, we developed a two-stream scheme (referred to as VA-fusion) that integrates the performance of two networks to obtain an improved prediction. Random rotation of skeletal sequences is used to avoid overfitting during training and improve the reliability of view adaption models. An extensive experiment demonstrates that our proposed view adaptive networks outperform existing solutions on five challenging benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Biodiesel is relatively unstable on storage and European biodiesel standard EN-14214 calls for determining oxidation stability at 110 °C with a minimum induction time of 6 h by the Rancimat method (EN-14112). According to proposed National Mission on biodiesel in India, we have undertaken studies on stability of biodiesel from tree borne non-edible oil seeds Jatropha. Neat Jatropha biodiesel exhibited oxidation stability of 3.95 h. It is found possible to meet the desired EN specification for neat Jatropha biodiesel and metal contaminated Jatropha biodiesel by using antioxidants; it will have a cost implication, as antioxidants are costly chemicals. Research was conducted to increase the oxidation stability of metal contaminated Jatropha biodiesel by doping metal deactivator with antioxidant, with varying concentrations in order to meet the aforementioned standard required for oxidation stability. It was found that usage of antioxidant can be reduced by 30–50%, therefore the cost, even if very small amount of metal deactivator is doped in Jatropha biodiesel to meet EN-14112 specification. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Software organizations are increasingly combining agile methodologies and distributed software development (DSD) for efficiently and effectively built software products. There are numerous challenges associated with scaling agile methods in a distributed environment. Our study is intended to explore and prioritize the challenges for scaling agile practices in the DSD environment. This study was divided into 3 stages. In the first stage, 22 challenges were identified from literature review and grouped into 4 categories: management, team, technology, and process based on discussion with experts. In the second stage, an online questionnaire study was conducted to validate the identified challenges. Finally, analytic hierarchy process method was used to prioritize challenges and their categories based on their relative importance. The results highlighted that management is a most significant category as compared with the other categories. Similarly, lack of management commitments, lack of effective communication, lack of knowledge sharing, etc are identified as the most significant challenges that need to be focused by the organizations for scaling agile methodologies. On the basis of the research findings, we could conclude that the identified challenges along with their categories provide a robust framework to scale agile methodologies in the DSD environment. Investigating the challenges that negatively affect scaling of agile methodologies in the DSD environment, validating the challenges using online questionnaire survey, and prioritizing the challenges using AHP method based on their relative importance, this study provides a robust framework to scale agile methodologies in the DSD environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]